Falling Towards Apotheosis
by Selena
Summary: As Vanessa's true plan to defeat Dracula is revealed, she and her friends find themselves on an epic quest that involves the living and dead alike.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : Characters and situations in this particular interpretation owned by John Logan and Showtime.

 **Timeline** : post-show, thus spoilers for all three seasons.

 **Warnings** : Canonical deaths refered to; mythological violence.

 **Thanks to** : My beta-reader Chelseagirl, going above and beyond; also Wee_Warrior, La Reine Noire, and Voodoochild for always discussing the show with me when it was broadcast and thus inspiring a lot of this.

* * *

 **I. Prologue**

"And in his inhuman form?" Vanessa asked. Catriona Hartdegen leaned forward, and Vanessa was struck again by the way the fire lights danced on her skin. Joan the Cutwife would have loved this woman.

"No one has ever lived to tell the tale," Catriona replied, and proceeded to discuss the way to kill Dracula in his human shape, to discover his identity. It reminded Vanessa of the careful, careful way she used to restore the dead creatures Sir Malcolm sent home to an appearance that betrayed nothing of death; of how she gave them eyes that shone, mirroring life. Taking apart, putting together, creating; and then Catriona said "house of the night creatures", and the puzzle was complete.

It cut through her, sharper than any blade.

 _No grief_ , she thought. _Not now. You may not grieve before you killed, and kill you must._

Yet the enormity of the betrayal was still shaking her, and she had to borrow Shelley's words when forcing into sounds what truth she'd figured out. Then she was done with poetry.

"He will let you close enough to kill," Catriona said. "Think of this, and this only."

"It will not be enough."

"You are strong, my dear, and..."

"You misunderstand," Vanessa interrupted, welcoming the rage that started to dispel the numbness of shock, loss and disappointment. "It will not be enough to kill him once, to kill him in his human form. Don't you see? He will return. You told me as much. He always will come back. I have to kill him in _all_ his forms. I have to take what is immortal and destroy it so completely that he's gone forever."

Catriona frowned. "But if he truly is a fallen angel, then the core of him, that what is still divine and immortal, why, that..."

"...Is in the realm from which no traveller returns," Vanessa finished, wearily. "I know. To kill him there as well, I'll have to die."


	2. The Challenge

II.

Malcolm had dreamt of Vanessa before she died. Far more often than he would have ever admitted, least of all to her. When exhaustion and every single one of his many years finally allowed him to sleep after he'd buried her, he was not surprised to find himself in the maze that used to be the pride of all the gardeners employed at his country house. He was not surprised to see the dark haired girl leisurely stroll before him, never turning back, no older than twelve, the ribbons in her hair loose, hastily bound. One fell down, and he picked it up, feeling the silk and velvet in his fingers. When he rose, he saw Vanessa standing before him, not the child Vanessa, Mina's playmate, but the adolescent girl eager for womanhood who took an unworthy fool she did not even truly want and broke their lives, hers, most of all.

"Sir Malcolm," she said, and the iron garden door, the door he closed in her face that day, it was between them.

A better man would ask her if she truly was at peace now, at God's side. A better man would tell her he had loved her, more than reason.

"I took you for so many things," Malcolm said, his hands clenched around the iron, knuckles white, "but never a deserter. How dare you!"

Colour rose in her cheeks. She was the woman who'd come into his town house now, years later, fury and strength in her eyes, all dressed in black.

"You vainglorious, selfish man!" she cried, as she had then.

"We swore," Malcolm said. "Not to give up. Never."

"I didn't," Vanessa said, Vanessa in her ball gown, the night at Mr. Grey's when she had felt the witches surrounding her, the last night he had been sated with the opium of Evelyn Poole's presence. "Do you know me so little? How dare _you_!"

Her eyes were blazing. She touched the iron with her own hands, and it melted. Some of the burning drops fell on his hands. He did not draw them back, though the pain was excruciating.

"You need to go to Egypt," she told him. "Our dear Mr. Lyle is there, and he will help you."

"Help me to do what?"

Vanessa took a step towards him. Now she was dressed in a way he'd never seen her, like a simple country woman of the High Lands. He could smell the rain in her hair.

"There are twelve parts," Vanessa said. "I know that now. Twelve here, in the Duat, that let him live forever, and twelve in Egypt. They anchor him to the physical realm. I will destroy those in the Duat. You need to destroy those in Egypt, all of them, or it will all have been in vain. But if we succeed, he will be gone forever, and no more innocents shall die!"

That was when Malcolm know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was dreaming. The sentimental wish fulfillment of an aged fool, no more.

"You were no innocent, Vanessa," he said, finally giving into temptation and touching her face. She wasn't cold, as Mina had been after he'd shot her. No, she burned, as Peter had done, when his son had still breathed.  
"And your death was worse than any other. If I dream you, why can't I dream you never died?"

"I was no innocent," she confirmed. "I made my covenant with death. But I have made one with you as well, Sir Malcolm, and I hold true to my oath. Will you?"

"You are _dead_ ," he repeated.

"Speak to Miss Hartdegen and Dr. Seward," she murmured. "Tell them that I succeeded. Tell them about the twelve parts. They will understand."

Suddenly, she caught his hand. "Do not fail me!" she hissed, and now she looked like she had done when their foes had possessed her, had taken her body for weeks, skin parched, hair dirty and wild, wrists showing the marks of binding. "This time, don't fail me!"

* * *

"Yes, she came to me," Dr. Seward said. He had found her in her office, listening to a recording of Vanessa's voice. While Malcolm had known such things could be created now, it still was both infuriating and painfully sweet to be confronted with such an example. "Before she went to him. And she did have a plan. She wouldn't tell me what it was. That, in fact, was why she'd come: she didn't want anyone to know, not even herself. I had helped her recover some of her memories before, things she'd kept hidden in her own mind because they were so painful. Now she wanted me to do the reverse. He and his brother could read what was on her mind at times, she said, dressing themselves up in those faces that had the most meaning for her. But what she had forgotten, had hidden so well in her mind that even she did not know there was something to hide, he could not find."

"I thought all doctors swore an oath to do no harm," Malcolm retorted. "If she went to him dazed and weakened from some mesmerism, no wonder she..."

"Sir Malcolm," Dr. Seward said with calm disdain, "I am not here as a convenient vehicle for you to transfer your guilt to. Now if you were my patient, I might sit still for such an attempt, since you'd be paying me. But since you don't, let me point out that I had only just started to believe in the existence of this creature, that Miss Ives knew him better than the rest of us, and that she needed to feel she was supported, not critiqued in how she wanted to defeat him."

There was something in a woman calmly dressing him down that Malcolm, under almost all circumstances, regarded as a challenge to be met not just in words but flirtation. This was not one of these circumstances.

"If you knew she wanted to die, you had no business of letting her go. She could..."

"She did not _want_ to die when she left me," Dr. Seward interrupted him. "If I had thought that, I would never have agreed. But she knew it was a risk. She would not tell me even what her plan was. She simply asked me to take the memory of the last few hours from her. I might add that if the stories she told me are true, you asked her to give her mind to him and creatures like him when trying to find your daughter, and you told her, more than once, that you cared not if she died of it. Between the two of us, who showed more respect for her will and mind?"

There was no reply that he could give her to this. Nor did he wish to. He had fought beside this woman against Dracula, and so he respected her, but there were only a few people whose regard or understanding Malcolm had sought in his life, and near-strangers who practiced Alienism and called it medical were not among them. Yet he had witnessed how she had dealt with the insane Renfield. She was efficient in her field.

"How do you tell," Malcolm asked, slowly, unwillingly, "how do you differ between dreams that are but longings of the heart, and those that carry truth?"

Dr. Seward regarded him thoughtfully. "They all carry truth, Sir Malcolm," she returned. "Or else I would not practice. Yet if you wish to know whether it was truly Miss Ives you saw, I would apply deduction. If she were but a figment expressing your own mind, she could not have told you what you did not know. I certainly never mentioned her last visit to you, or anyone else. What did Miss Hartdegen say?"

That conversation had been brief. "Yes, she said that only in the realm of death would she be able to defeat him for good. I told her that she should leave the immortal part of him to posterity, if there was one, and use the first chance she got to shoot the bastard," the young woman had snapped. "I thought I had persuaded her, and later that she had succumbed to him. Who told you about this?"

He had not spoken to Ethan about his dream, not yet. Maybe he _was_ learning kindness in his old age. To kill the one you love: Malcolm knew only too well what it meant. If there was consolation for Ethan, then it consisted of the fact that Vanessa was at peace now. To take this away, and have the reason turn out only the feverish delusions of a bitter old man, that would be cruel even for Malcolm, who had always found cruelty coming naturally to him.

And yet, and yet. Dr. Seward was right. What Vanessa had told him in the dream had been specific, and just been verified by her, and he could not have known this on his own.

 _This time, don't fail me._

Going to Egypt because of a dream was a fool's errand. But Malcolm had travelled for worse reasons. If there was even the slightest chance that Vanessa was still battling the foe who had destroyed her life, who had used Mina as one more tool for such destruction, then Malcolm could not, would not desert her in this fight.


	3. Child of God

III.

The light Vanessa saw was no longer that of candles, the warmth she felt no more of Ethan's arms. It was an overwhelming sense of awe and love that shook her, and with her last breath, she told him: "Ethan, I see our Lord."

Then the last sense of Ethan was gone, and where she had seen but through a glass, darkly, she now saw clearly. It was, to her amazement, a girl she saw, surely not older than eighteen or nineteen at most, with dark hair cut shorter than that of Dr. Seward, and clad in armor, as St. Michael was in all the pictures Vanessa had ever seen of him.

"Welcome, child of God," the young woman said. It took Vanessa a moment more to realise the words had not been said in English, and then she knew who this was. Of course. Her favourite of the saints, the one who had been burned as a witch, namesake to her dearest mentor: Joan.

Jeanne d'Arc.

"Where were you?" she found herself asking, which was not how she had thought to greet a saint. "Where was our Lord? Where is he? Am I so worthless that..."

The young woman gravely shook her head, and suddenly Vanessa became aware that they were standing on a shore. There was the sense of warm sand under her bare feet, as there had been when she was a child, running with Mina.

"Child of God," Jeanne said, "I know your fight. I know your suffering. When they lit the fire for me, it was you I felt, you and all the others crying out, as I did, as he did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We all became one then, did you not sense it? I was waiting for you. To arm you for the battle ahead."

It was as if a wall was tumbling down, a wall of carefully crafted stones Vanessa had built with her own hands, and she remembered once again. The knowledge was fire and strength at once.

"Oh, my poor Ethan," she murmured.

She had never planned to put this burden on him. She had thought it would be Sir Malcolm, who had proven he could survive it already.

"The battle..." She began.

"Yes," Jeanne said. "I know it well, I know your foe." Her face darkened, and for a moment, Vanessa could see the flesh turning into ash. Could see the skull underneath. Then Jeanne was the maid in armor once more.

"He was my comrade once," Jeanne said. "My brother-in-arms."

He. Alexander Sweet. Dracula. Half of an angel, and all fallen.

"The name he bore when I still lived was Gilles de Rais. He fought at my side, and then he wished to claim me. Swore that only he understood who I was, sought to take me from our Lord. It was Gilles who betrayed me so that I was captured. He wished me to call out to him for rescue, to hate all that was not him. Even when I went into the fire, he was still waiting. And then he made our world a slaughterhouse, until they burned his human form as well."

Gilles de Rais, Marshall of France, who rode at Jeanne's side and then tortured children to their deaths, hundreds of children, until he finally was discovered: Vanessa had been taught that tale, during a childhood where such stories were but things to frighten children with.

"It has to end," she said. Not just for her own sake, or Mina's. No, killing Alexander Sweet would not have been enough. All the voices through all the centuries crying out: Enough. She could not let it continue.

"Yes," Jeanne said.

"Why didn't you fight him?" Vanessa asked, with true curiosity. "You are God's maid, and angels speak to you, not demons. Why did you not seek to destroy him in this realm? You, who are in a state of grace?"

Jeanne sighed, then gave her a little smile. "If I am not, may God put me there, and if I am, may God so keep me. But I cannot go where he has hidden what makes him immortal, Vanessa. Whatever else I am, I am a Christian, and I cannot go to the realms that were before God's light came to us. But you can."

"I am no pagan," Vanessa protested without thinking about it, then grew quiet. She thought of all the creatures fleeing her, yet seeking her at the same time, the dark glory she'd felt then: the mother of all evil.

"No, but you were Amunet," Jeanne said matter-of-factly. "And so you can enter the Duat."

As if discussing strategy to lift a siege of an medieval town, she then told Vanessa what she knew: that there were twelve parts to make the Dragon whole, in either realm. That Vanessa still needed allies among mortal men, so that Dracula would have no refuge left, no way to resurrect himself again.

"If you succeed in destroying even one part, he will realise, and then he will fight back," Jeanne warned. "It might still mean your destruction, child of God. If you perish in the Duat, you will never leave it."

"I have known hell already," Vanessa said, and felt the padded walls around herself again, the jacket, and the crushing knowledge that those who put her there, her parents, had done it because they loved her and had thought nothing else would help her to get better.

There was no pagan underworld of old which could be worse than this.

"You will not be alone again," Jeanne said, as if reading her mind, and truly, here, where only mind was real, she probably did. "Never that, Vanessa. I cannot come with you, but anyone who loved you and is dead, you may call to your aid, and if they wish it, they will answer."

That was a gift of such enormity Vanessa did not let herself contemplate it just yet.

"What of the living?"

"No one who has not died may enter the Duat," Jeanne said, to the point and brief.

"But if my living friends are to destroy the twelve parts that bind Dracula to the mortal realm, I need to tell them this."

The maid of Orleans inclined her head, conceded the point and promised that before Vanessa entered the Duat, there would be time to speak with one of the living. Then she gave her gift: her sword, gleaming and sharp.

"You go to fight serpents, my sister," she said. "You must be armed."

Vanessa had not used a sword before, safe in play, as a child, made of wood. But she thought of the other Joan, of lessons about spirit and flesh, and how reality was formed in this place. She made the sword fit in her hands.  
"Did you..." she hesitated, but then asked. It was the question that had plagued her through the years.

"Did you ever doubt," she continued, "did you ever wonder whether the voices you heard were truly those of saints? How did you know they were not of the devil?"

Again, she saw the skin peel from Jeanne's face, turn into ash. She smelled the ugly stench of burning flesh. She heard a girl cry "Jesu! Jesu!" in pain beyond belief.

"That was what he told me," Jeanne whispered, "the other brother."

"Lucifer?"

"Yes. He, too, came. When they kept me prisoner in Rouen. He told me that my saints had never come to me, nor blessed Michael the Archangel. Why should God be on the side of France, he asked, or England, or any other realm? He said that I had served him, truly, and that was why Gilles had fought at my side."

For a moment, she wore not her armor, but shackles, and her hair was long, grown through months of imprisonment.

"I was afraid then," Jeanne whispered. "Afraid I'd die, and go to hell, and so I signed my confession, admitting heresy and witchcraft. I feared the fire, even. Such pain. But then they told me I would live, yet live shut away from sun and air. What kind of life was that? That was when I knew he had tricked me. _That_ had been my heresy. To believe him, and all for life without any meaning. No. I claimed my saints again, and went through the fire."

She put her hands on Vanessa's shoulders.

"It is not wrong to doubt," she said. "And all of us fall prey to the Devil at times. But coming back, continuing the fight, that is what counts."

There was the sense of warmth again that had enveloped Vanessa when she had died, of love and awe. She closed her eyes. When she allowed herself to see once more, Jeanne had vanished, and so had the beach. Instead, Vanessa found herself in a maze she knew all too well. With joy and pain in her heart, she began to walk.


	4. The Gathering

IV.

In the end, they all went to Egypt, and a stranger besides. Ethan, Malcolm had expected, though Ethan made also clear that he thought it had been Malcolm's grief that had spoken to him in his dream, and that this journey was a way for him to deal with this. Vanessa, Ethan said, was at peace.

"You did not try to persuade him otherwise?" Dr. Seward asked. Malcolm simply shook his head. She might have been Vanessa's chosen confidante, but she was not his. He suspected that if he told her that he understood why Ethan needed to believe this, that "she is at peace now, and there was no other way" could be the only thing that allowed you to continue without killing yourself as well after you took the life of the woman you had sworn to protect, Dr. Seward would have insisted on making him talk about his family. Given what he had witnessed when she had taken Renfield's knowledge out of the madman's unwilling head, he was not sure Dr. Seward would not succeed with him, if he gave her the slightest opening.

Dr. Seward joining them on their journey had not really surprised him, either; she seemed to feel responsible for Vanessa, despite denying it, she had an understandable loathing for Dracula, and she struck him as a born meddler, an estimation confirmed when he overheard Victor Frankenstein talking wistfully about his mother to her at breakfast, while Ethan exchanged views on former American presidents with her over lunch.

Victor joining them had been more of an uncertainty, but had been very welcome. Given the looks of him, Malcolm wasn't quite sure he would not return to find Victor dead, or with his mind completely destroyed by drugs, if Victor was to remain unoccupied again, as he plainly had been during Malcolm's absence. It was not a little irksome, finding oneself caring for a young man with not much skill for self preservation. And yet, Malcolm reminded himself, the young man had survived so far.

Miss Catriona Hartdegen, on the other hand, Malcolm had had not even to invite; she, he found out, had been planning on joining Ferdinand Lyle in Egypt already. "Besides," she said, "to kill something immortal is the kind of folly no Thanatologist should miss."

"You came with me to save our son," Kaetenay said, when Malcolm asked his question, and no more, as if the implication was self evident.

The true surprise was the man Malcolm found at Vanessa's grave when he went there to follow Kaetenay's advice and gather some earth from it. It might, Kaetenay had said, be necessary to contact her again, and finding someone in the spirit world who was dead was easier if there was some physical connection to their bones. Ethan's instant protest at the idea of exhuming Vanessa, of taking a part of her body, had been so violent that the earth of her grave had been the hasty compromise Miss Hartdegen had come up with, and which prevailed to keep the peace. Malcolm had gone, to exclude further debate. He was, he discovered, not the first to arrive with a shovel and pots, though the man he found was evidently there to plant some flowers, not to remove something. Not any flowers; rose hip, which Vanessa had loved, something a stranger could not know.

The man was tall, broad-shouldered, heavily scarred, with skin that reminded Malcolm, who had seen a great many of them, of dead bodies. He also had extraordinary eyes, not amber but truly yellow; something that would have marked him as both predator and prey, had he been animal. Given what Malcolm now knew about Ethan and Kaetenay both, he could not exclude the possibility.

"I mean no disrespect. She was," the stranger said defensively, "my friend," and that was how Malcolm learned of John Clare, a likely alias, but then they all had their secrets. He did recall Vanessa mentioning him now and then, but at the time his mind and body had been all Evelyn's, and he hardly had noticed anything or anyone else, so he could not remember what she had said. Yet John Clare, it turned out, had known her in her other life as well, those lost years spent at medical facilities, or, as Vanesssa once said bitterly, torture chambers.

Malcolm, intending to leave the next day with the others on the passenger ship he had bought tickets for, had invited Clare to his house, intending a shared drink, no more, in memory of Vanessa. Until Victor and John Clare caught sight of each other, at which point the mutual shock would have been enough to alert even the deaf, dumb and blind.

By the time they were on the Atlantic, Mr. Clare included among their number, Malcolm was sure he still only had half the story, but what had been revealed was extraordinary enough.

"The one thing I don't understand," Catriona Hartdegen mused when they were exercising by sparring on the upper deck, Malcolm feeling every decade while she danced effortlessly around him with her blade, "is why that young man didn't shout it from the skies if he had actually managed to create life out of dead bodies. He doesn't strike me as the sort to hold back with his achievements, any more than you would, Sir Mountain In Africa."

Far from taking pride in his achievement, Victor had insisted that it had only succeeded by accident, that it would thus be impossible to repeat and thus could not be spoken about to the scientific world, or anyone else, for that matter. Mr. Clare's expression at that claim had been mainly one of hostile amusement. Yet he had not contradicted Victor. In fact, the two of them went out of their way to avoid each other, which on a boat with a limited number of people to interact with was not easy. However, Victor had confirmed that John Clare was extraordinarily strong and resilient, which would be of great help, should Dracula's minions await them in Egypt. For his part, Clare had insisted that if there was still a chance to help "Miss Ives" to battle her tormentor, he would gladly join this effort.

"And you know both of us so well to make that judgment, Miss Hartdegen," Malcolm replied sardonically, trying a new feint which she parried.

"I know men," she said.

"And women?" he challenged.

"I know women, too," she returned with some amusement, not batting an eyelash.

"And yet," Malcolm said, "you read Vanessa wrong. Or else you're lying about not knowing which plan she intended to go through with. Either possibility does not enhance my trust in your powers of judgment, Miss Hartdegen."

She fell back, but only to attack him from another side.

"Sir M," she said, finally and ever so satisfyingly slightly out of breath, "if you could trust me, you wouldn't spend any time with me. How's that for a judgment?"

In truth, he did enjoy her company. Given the last woman whose company he had enjoyed had been Evelyn Poole, this did not say much about her trustworthiness. He'd gladly killed Evelyn by the end, when he'd understood what she had done to him and was planning to do with Vanessa, but he also still woke up at times with his body aching for her, her laughter ringing in his ears. The depressing truth was that had she never used a spell on him, he'd still have fallen in deeply with Evelyn Poole, multiple murderer that she'd been. "Like calls to like," she'd have commented on this thought, and thus he was expecting Miss Hartdegen to reveal a bloody past at any moment. In the meantime, he questioned her about what she knew of the Egyptian mythology, kept fencing with her to get into better shape, and tried not to wonder what he would do if nothing else awaited in Egypt but sand and old monuments.

"There are several cosmogonies in Egyptian mythology," Catriona told them all when they were assembled together on the upper deck, watching the nightly sky, "and thus different creation myths and stories of the underworld. But they all agree on this: the only possibility to travel through the Duat is on the barge of Re."

"Re is the sun god, isn't he?" Dr. Seward asked.

"Usually," Catriona confirmed. "But not when travelling through the Duat. Then he becomes "Auf", which means 'dead body'. He has to pass through twelve stages, fitting the twelve provinces of Egypt and the twelve hours of the night. And at the end, he has to confront the serpent Apophis, the worst of monsters, so powerful that it eats souls."

"And that is now Miss Ives' task?" John Clare asked, sounding deeply disturbed.

"No, it is not," Ethan said angrily. "She is at peace."

Dr. Seward cleared her throat. "Be that as it may, we cannot help her in this. Our task, if Sir Malcolm has dreamt true, is to destroy twelve objects used by Dracula to bind himself to this world. Which, if you'll excuse me for pointing out the obvious, Sir Malcolm, sounds to me as if looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. There must be literally thousands of relics in Egypt. Even assuming Miss Hartdegen and our mutual friend Mr. Lyle manage to use their expertise to narrow down the choice, to exclude, say, anything that is younger than two millennia, it still would take various lifetimes..."

"There is one myth here of obvious help," Catriona commented, "that of Osiris. Who died, and rose from the dead, because his faithful wife Isis managed to collect his body parts, all but one. The myth names various places in Egypts as the places where Osiris' body parts were found. Where his cult was the strongest."

"Even so..."

"The Verbis Diablo," Ethan said abruptly, still not looking at any of them, but in the distance, where waves and darkness become one.

"Yes," Malcolm said, realising what he meant, "yes!"

He remembered how it had felt, putting the hints and stories from tribes together to find a way through places yet unchartered by any maps; the pure excitement of it, which had nothing to do with any cause or morals of the enterprise. For a moment, it captured him again.

"Will either of the gentlemen enlighten us?" Dr. Seward asked, eyebrow raised.

"We first found the story of the fallen angels written on various relics in the British museum," Malcolm said. "In a language like none other, the bastard child of many languages at once. It stands to reason that relics that provide Dracula with his power to return to this plane would be similarly engraved. Now there might be many relics with hieroglyphs in Egypt, and with Greek letters, due to the Ptolomies. But I bet there are not many that use this particular writing."

"If they exist," Victor said. He hadn't said anything, but Malcolm suspected he was inclined to Ethan's opinion that all of this was but an way to deal with grief, not a true message from the grave. Victor the atheist, so determined in his disbelief, and yet so ready to fight monsters if it allowed him not to having to dwell on his own choices. This, too, Malcolm could relate to.

"They do," he said, projecting confidence as best he could. "Never show any doubts when leading an expedition," he'd said to Peter, trying to explain, "or they will turn on you."

"But Father, what if you are in error about something? Would you not be grateful if someone prevented you from going the wrong way?"

"If you can't tell a sensible objection from a childish complaint for the sake of complaining, you have no business leading expeditions to begin with. What you're now doing is clearly an example of the later," Malcolm had retorted witheringly, and Peter had fallen silent, hurt. One of many times.

When Malcolm had watched Jared Talbot tear into Ethan, the ugly familiarity of it had made it even easier to shoot the man, in the end.

Later, when their little group had split up again, Ethan was the only one remaining on deck, and so Malcolm remained with him. They didn't speak, just watched the stars while the sky grew lighter again. Finally, Malcolm said:

"You may have given us the way to destroy him, you know."

"Even if I believed that, it still wouldn't help. How long does it take, Malcolm?" Ethan demanded, for the first time not bothering with the respectful title anymore. "How long does it fucking take to live with something like that?"

Malcolm didn't reply. He put a hand on Ethan's shoulder, and Ethan leaned into the touch, just a little, as the morning breeze found them.


	5. The First Gate

V.

The first thing Vanessa did upon entering the barge was to cut her arm's skin upon Jeanne's blade, a shallow cut, just enough to draw blood. This she then used to draw her scorpion's sigil on the ship, until it was warded.

 _Selket_ , it sighed at her, _Scorpion,_ and she said: "Yes."

She had been to the British Museum, many times, and so she had expected the barge to resemble what she had seen there. Instead, it resembled nothing so much as the paper ships she had folded with Mina and Peter when they were children, which confused her until she understood. This was _her_ barge, made of her dreams and fears.

The gate that appeared in front of her, gigantic enough for her ship to sail through, that gave at first to her appeared to be made of candles, like the candles that had surrounded her in the hour of her death. But as her barge drew closer, she began to see these were no candles. No, that gate was made of the same white padding that the walls had been made off when she had spent an endless time looked up in a room, and the horror of the memory engulfed her.

"Mother," she called, "Mother!"

As the barge passed through the first gate, she felt her mother's arms around her as she had not done for many years. Claire Ives had died in terror of the sight of her daughter copulating with the Devil, and since then, Vanessa had not spoken her name, not even to Joan Clayton. It was not simply been guilt that had sealed her lips. She had always resented her mother as much as she had loved her. As a girl, she had longed to be all her mother was, beautiful, accomplished, a magnet that drew the eyes of everyone in the room, the one to lead a conversation, not to follow it. And then she'd seen her mother with Sir Malcolm, and though she understood the act was a betrayal of her father, she'd longed to have this, too.

Vanessa's mother, in her turn, had loved her, been proud of her, and been there for her through the scandal that destroyed two families. But Claire had also been the one to choose the doctors in whose care she gave Vanessa. As the treatments grew harsher, more extreme, it had become impossible for Vanessa not to blame her. She'd screamed then for her mother, too. Screamed for mercy, and no one had heard.

She'd killed her mother, there was no way around that truth. As surely as if she'd put a knife into Claire's heart. And then it was impossible to feel anything but guilt. How could she be angry anymore when her own fault was infinitely worse? Love and guilt and anger she did no longer allow herself to recognize had bound her tongue as surely as a spell, and so her mother remained unspoken of, until now.

"Mother," Vanessa cried, and Claire held her.

As soon as they had passed the gate, Claire let her go.

"My darling," she said, "what have you done to yourself?"

The phrase was tenderness and sincere accusation in one tone. That summed up their relationship, Vanessa thought. She did not have the time to think about an answer. They were now in the Duat, and the first thing Vanessa noticed was the utter lack of wind, of breeze, of any kind of movement in the air. Her barge drifted, then did cease to move.

In Scotland, one longed for an end to wind and rain more than for wind, yet the Cutwife had taught Vanessa some words to provide the weather with some gentle encouragements, and she found herself whispering them now. Her mother, the elegant mistress of the drawing room, frowned deeply.

"This was the start of your pain," Claire said. "Learning these things."

Vanessa shook her head. "No. That was what helped me use it. What made me feel I was not mad."

Inside her, a child railed at Claire, wanted to shout: _You were the start of my pain, you began it all, you and him! I never would have betrayed Mina if I hadn't seen the both of you!_

She held her tongue, but had forgotten that thought was deed in this realm. Her mother paled.

"I never knew," she said. "I never knew in life. Oh Vanessa, if I'd known..."

"Would you have still sent me to that hospital?" Vanessa demanded before she could stop herself. Her mother had no chance of answering. Suddenly, there _was_ movement in the air. The darkness grew thicker, and louder, too. When Vanessa looked up, she saw the swarm of birds, black birds with beaks sharper than steel hacking away at her. The sigil held them long enough for Vanessa to cry that Claire should not move, and to imagine her mother one with the paper, invisible to prying eyes. Then the birds burst through.

She felt their malice, saw their black, round eyes, and bloody drops dripping from the beaks that sought her face. With all she had, she pushed back, imagining a fire setting their feathers aflame. Their unearthly cries grew so shrill that Vanessa knew if she'd been living, her eardrums would have burst at the pain.

"Don't let them burn," a voice called. "You still need them."

Slowly, she turned around. There was a single black bird who'd not flown with the swarm, was not in flames. If the others resembled ravens, this one reminded her more of a magpie. It sat on her ship's mast, watching her, head tilted. There had been something familiar about the voice.

"Why is that?" Vanessa asked.

"There is no wind here," the magpie said, "or haven't you noticed? You need someone to draw the ship forward. They could do that for you."

As much as anything did in this strange place, this did make sense. Vanessa wished the fire to stop, but the effort at concentration it took to do this and still stop the birds from attacking her again by drawing her sigil in the air in front of them meant that her mother became visible, discernible from the paper again, and the magpie noticed her.

"Of course," it said. "We can never escape our mothers."

Now Vanessa knew her. "Hecate," she said. "Hecate Poole."

"Why yes, Miss Ives. This is not how I imagined my reward from the Master, let me tell you that. Doomed to guard relics in the underworld."

She should have recognized that sulking girl's voice sooner. Vanessa, careful to keep her hands raised, asked: "Why didn't you attack me?"

"You were my mother's obsession," the magpie chirped, "and the Master's. Not mine. I could never see what the appeal was, Miss Ivory Ives. But we do share something, you and I. You see, I loved our wolf. I did not mean to. I meant to use him, nothing more. But he was kind to me, and no one else has been, not since my mother gave me to the Master when I was five. I think he even may have loved me, just a little."

The pang of jealousy she felt came unexpected to Vanessa. She did not know why. When she had first encountered him, Ethan had cheerfully dallied with every woman of the carnival who showed an interest. Within a few weeks, he'd fallen in love with Brona, his ailing lady of the night, and shared a bed with Dorian Grey. And had she not rejected that vision of the two of them living good, chaste lives as husband and wife with which the Devil had tried to tempt her?

And yet, and yet. She remembered how Evelyn Poole had made her feel, and it hadn't been just headaches caused by witchery. It might not be a logical thing to think, given the circumstances, but what was hers was hers. And now, for the second time, she learned that a Poole woman had taken what was hers.

"Such a dog in the manger, Miss Ives" the magpie needled with all the enthusiasm of a spiteful girl. "But truly now. He saved my life and fought for me and tried to save me again, our Ethan, and thus I owe him. Which I now repay. I know what you seek, Miss Ives. Those birds will not just draw you through Duat, they'll find all twelve parts for you. Now, gaining what they find, that is for you to do. As is destroying it."

The malice in Hecate's tone grew again. "Be warned, though. There is no fire in this realm able to burn something truly immortal, no water to dissolve it, no air to dispense it into nothingness, no earth to swallow it whole."

The wording, Vanessa thought desperately, pay attention to the wording. The secret was always in the details, with every spell. She repeated each word Hecate had said in her mind, but the loophole refused to show itself.

"If you can help my daughter, do so," her mother, who'd been silent until now yet evidently paid attention, said in her most scornful way. "But do not waste her time with schoolyard taunts."

This was the mother who could reduce Vanessa from a tantrum over not being allowed to spend an entire week with the Murrays to shamed silence, just with a look and a tone of voice. Vanessa found herself smiling, and for the first time in years, the memory of her mother did not bring her pain.

"I helped her already," the magpie said indignantly. "More help will cost a price. I am a nightcomer, not a lady dispensing charity!"

Suddenly, Vanessa wondered how old Hecate truly was. It could be anything between youngest womanwhood and a century or more, she supposed, given Joan's life span and that of Evelyn Poole. And then she thought of a five years old child being given to the devil, and shuddered. The birds, feeling the slightest sense of her control slipping, started to beat their wings. Once more, she focused.

"If you bring me the part of him which is hidden in this area, and tell me how to destroy it," Vanessa said slowly, "I will give you something you truly need, what you long for in your heart."

The magpie grew very still. Then it flew down, and sat on her shoulder. Vanessa could feel the sharp talons entering her flesh.

"It is all mind, you know," the magpie said. "You feel my talons because you still believe yourself a creature of the flesh. I'm longer dead than you, and I still struggle with it as well."

Vanessa didn't reply. She waited.

"Ah well," the magpie said. "I should very much like to see him again. Even like this." She spread her wings, and flew away.

"What now?" her mother asked. "Do you think this creature will return with what you want to have? And how will you repay her? Vanessa, surely you cannot mean to hold a devil's bargain!"

"She'd have known it if I had lied," Vanessa said, and turned her attention to the other birds, their hungry viciousness, so barely held in thrall, infinitely sharper than Hecate's girlish glee. She focused on them to the exclusion of everything else.

"I," she told them, "am the mother of evil. You will not dare to attack me again. You will do as I say." She let them sense that endless darkness that she'd shared not long ago, the pestilence from her kiss spreading to kill hundreds. _Next to this, you are nothing_ , she thought. _Know your mistress._

Slowly, one by one, they drooped their heads.

By the time Hecate returned, they had ropes slung around them, and were indeed drawing the barge in the direction where the next gate had to lie. Claire had started to recite the rosary and was on her third Ave Maria. Her recitation did not sound panicked, or like an accusation; she simply prayed, as if she could do no other.

Hecate held something in her talons that looked like a claw of its own. As she dropped it in Vanessa's lap, Vanessa could see that it resembled nothing so much as a hand, embalmed, on which the beetles Mr. Lyle used to keep had started their cleaning business, but had not yet finished it. There was rotting flesh and bone, and yet, when looked at again, there were no such things, just thousands of tiny maggots forming the shape of a claw.

"His hand," Hecate said. "One of them. I know it well. His brother's that gave me the scars on my body was just like it. Now prove to me you'll keep your bargain, and I'll tell you more."

You've lain with that, Vanessa thought. You've let it stroke your flesh and give you ecstasy. Look well, Vanessa Ives.

Then she forced her gaze away, and turned to her mother. Claire's eyes, so much like Vanessa's own, grew wide, and Vanessa could see she understood.

Hecate didn't. Instead, she chirped: "Promise to me, on oath, that he'll be mine when he dies, that you will not take him."

"Hecate," Vanessa said sadly, "what you truly need is not a lover."

"What?"

Eyes on Claire, Vanessa said: "What you truly need is a mother who knows how to be one, and who knows how to love. There is no greater gift."

It was her way of telling Claire that she forgave her, and asked for Claire's forgiveness in return. Vanessa raised her hands.

"But - but -" Hecate stammered. "I have not yet - you couldn't -..."

"You don't know how to destroy it," Vanessa said. "Or else you wouldn't have made such a quick bargain. You planned on lying to me. We can tell in this realm, remember? But I spoke the truth. You do need a good mother, Hecate Poole. And I am sending you with her to where she came from."

Which surely could not be purgatory. Her mother had suffered for her sins in life and then through the hour of her death. No, her mother must have been at peace, and with the blessed.

"My darling girl," Claire said, and stepped towards her, close enough to kiss. But she did not touch Vanessa's face as her hands moved up. Instead, they took the magpie. There was something glittering in Claire's eyes. Tears, resolve, or anger?

"Return to whence you came," Vanessa whispered, and let go.

When the birds pulled the barge through the second gate, she was alone.


	6. Alexandria Arriving

VI.

There was not much left of the Alexandria of old; Malcolm, who'd visited the city quite often as a point of entry to Africa, had never bothered to stay long. Stripped of its name and legend, it was, save for what was commonly called "Pompey's Pillar", a current day Arab city without any other notable buildings. The last time he'd been here, Sembene had still been alive, and they'd simply organized supplies and means of transport.

"Ah, but the coffee-houses of Alexandria," Ferdinand Lyle said. "You must admit they are a marvel."

Mr. Lyle, who'd been awaiting them, having been notified of their intent by telegram, at first glance did not appear to be much changed, all extravagant compliments and flamboyant demeanour. But there was a sadness in his eyes that was unmistakable, and when Malcolm found himself alone with him, Mr. Lyle said, entirely without elaboration: "I am, I fear, not a strong man, in body or in faith. And you know her faith is not mine. But I spoke Kaddish for our dear Miss Ives."

Malcolm had not prayed for Vanessa, not when standing at her grave, and not in the days and night since. He had not prayed for any of his family. The last time he'd paid lip service to his nominal membership to the Church of England had been in the early years of his marriage to Gladys. He sympathized with Victor Frankenstein in his rejection of belief, though it had not been a singular event or loss that had turned him atheist; rather, it had been a conclusion he'd arrived at as a student, not departed since, but had not felt strongly enough about to announce. What he had seen since of the supernatural world had not changed his opinion much; he could not believe there was benevolent design to the existence of such creatures as Dracula.

"She needs our help now even more than prayers, Mr. Lyle," Malcolm said. It wasn't meant as a reproof, but he found himself impatient now that they were on land again. There had been no more dreams for him, nor, to his knowledge, for anyone else; he simply relied on his instinct, the instinct that had allowed him to survive for long, and that told him time was of the essence. "We need to locate..."

"Ah, about this," Lyle said, and sighed. "It is, I'm afraid, not a very good time in Egypt right now. The Khedive died in January, and his son and successor resents the British protectorate forced upon his father, and he hates the British consul, who, if I might say so myself, is an incredibly overbearing man. To tell a young man that he needs to ask Britain which cabinet members to appoint! Well, it will not surprise you to learn how young Abbas Pasha reacted. All the archaeologists from Britain are still waiting to have their firmans for diggings confirmed or reconfirmed, and officials don't get received."

"This is unacceptable," Malcolm said furiously. "We need to - Vanessa needs our help _now_. We cannot twiddle our thumbs while some petty potentate..."

"Sir Malcolm," Lyle interrupted, "as much as I would like nothing more than join you in your splendidly inspiring display of righteous anger, I would appreciate it if you allow me to point a few things out, and even let me make a suggestion or two."

There few things more instantly disarming than Lyle's brand of irony, subtle satire even, interwoven with flattery. Malcolm gave him a look, and then a silent nod. Lyle pulled out a delicately laced hankerchief and touched his forehead before he continued.

"I have seen too much to discount the possibility that Miss Ives is indeed facing now a struggle in a realm beyond our comprehension, or that the creature known as Dracula could be harmed were we to destroy some artefacts, much as the general principle of destroying artefacts offends me as a scholar. Frankly, once one has stood in the presence of a centuries old woman bathing in blood, there isn't much one can discount, in the large scheme of things. But I would like to ask you to consider something, too, Sir Malcolm. You are, forgive me for pointing out the obvious, a man of action, Sir. Not being able to do something in the face of pain, to be helpless, is alien to your very nature, as much as it is a sadly familiar experience to me. Can it not be - and I am merely suggesting the possibility - that presented with a reality as painful as Miss Ives' death, your mind conjured up a way for you to act again? For you to speak to Miss Ives again, instead of admitting her to be lost to you forever?"

"I did not know Vanessa had spoken to both Miss Hartdegen and Dr. Seward about fighting this man in death, or that there are twelve parts in the Egyptian underworld," Malcolm returned, trying very hard to remain calm. "How could I have learned this, but through her?"

Lyle visibly struggled with something, then took a deep breath. "As for the Egyptian underworld, I might not be the most memorable of men, but I think I did explain about the Duat when you first started to consult me, Sir. And if I remember what you told me about your dream, you were simply told to speak to Miss Hartdegen and Dr. Seward, not what they would say. Sir Malcolm, I know them well. Either Lady shares, if I may say so, certain qualities. They do not bow to convention, especially in as much as it involves being dictated to by men. Miss Hartdegen excels at all involving weaponry. Dr. Seward has chosen a field both new and ancient, the most challenging of all, the human soul, and you have watched her mastery of it as well. Now you may never wish to talk to me again of this, but there has been a lady of our mutual acquaintance who united all these qualities, and whom you, as you put it to me as the time, courted."

"At the time when you were her spy," Malcolm said, every word a barely constrained growl, "if it is Mrs. Poole you talk of."

The guilt in Lyle's face did not stop him from nodding and falling silent. He had made his point.

It wasn't implausible, that was the hell of it. Malcolm had tried to deal with his guilt over Peter and Mina by throwing himself into a feverish hunt. He had dealt with the death of Sembene, who had been, save for Vanessa and definitely including his late wife Gladys, the person who knew him best in this world, and whom he felt closest to, by leaving London and returning to Africa. Burying Sembene in the earth that had given him birth had also meant not having to be in London, where Sembene had died, trying to rescue Malcolm. To act, to travel, to leave behind the places where he had experienced loss: this was Malcolm's nature. And Lyle was not wrong about the qualities Dr. Seward and Catriona Hartdegen shared, either, though he was either too innocent or too tactful to mention they did not only share them with Evelyn Poole but with Vanessa, too.

For his black heart to take this and form it into a fantasy of reunion, to provide himself with another quest: was this not far more likely than anything else? Why had he been so certain that it was Ethan who dealt with the unbearable by clinging to an idea, not himself? What if they all were just indulging him in a fantasy, to humor the old man?

 _This time, don't fail me._

"Should I go and leave you alone now?" Lyle asked gently.

"No," Malcolm said tonelessly, "no."

For a while, they sat in silence. The shops in Alexandria resembled cupboards, rather than rooms. A raised seat of brick, about three feet high, and the same in width extended along each side of the street. The tradesmen were sitting in front of their shops, usually smoking. Only the coffee houses were an exception, as they were not only larger, but had many more people sitting both inside and outside. Lyle and Malcolm were but two of many. He was grateful for the anonymity, as he found his hands shaking when accepting the water pipe Lyle handed over.

"It doesn't matter," Malcolm finally said. "I'll grant you all of this could be true. But even if it is; I cannot do otherwise. I must continue on this path. Help me or not. It is your choice."

"As if I could ever deny a dashing gentleman his wishes," Lyle replied, the wistful humor in his voice echoing better days. "Very well. I have a suggestion or two in this regard as well. Not least because I did visit the museum in Cairo when your first telegram arrived, where all the antiques are that were not whisked away to London, Berlin or Paris. And while the angle of observation was not convenient, so I couldn't be sure, I think I spotted at least two pieces there that could be inscribed with letters familiar to our company by now. Moreover, I have made a list of all the possible locations where worship for Osiris was at its strongest, and where Amunet was worshipped as well; both together are not so common, as she is not regarded as an aspect of Isis, and has fallen into disfavour during the later dynasties, just like Seth. I even have an idea how to get around the fact that our nationality does currently not allow us to engage in official excavations."

Handing the water pipe back to him, Malcolm said: "You are a man of infinite resourcefulness, Mr. Lyle. And a good friend. Truly."

"Well," Lyle replied, sounding pleased, "I try. As for my idea, I must admit my daring adventure at the Royal Society in Mr. Chandler's stirring company has given it to me, when we were liberating artifacts in London. To put it bluntly, Sir Malcolm: some of us must break into the great museum in Cairo. And the rest shall engage in the profession that Egyptians here have practiced not just since centuries but for millennia, if the tablets and warning seals in tombs are to be believed: grave robbery."


	7. Oil and Water

VII.

Vanessa had managed to pass through the second and third gate and collect her bounty; not without effort, but she had managed, and began to be confident her task was not impossible. But what lay behind the fourth gate of the Duat came as worse than a surprise. The smell of oil that greeted her as she sailed through the gate was instant, and everywhere. When she looked down, she saw that there was no water around her barge anymore. All was oil, black and stinking, and when one of the birds dragging the barge flew too deep, the waves licked at its wings and made them stick. It tried to fly higher again, but the oil was everywhere on its feathers, and it fell on the white paper of Vanessa's boat, spraying bits of oil on it. Helplessly, it cried, until an oil drop got in its throat.

It was an evil creature, but she could not bear to see anything wild suffer this fate. Vanessa knelt, and broke its throat. It still kept moving, throwing itself around with wings full of oil and broken neck.

"Nothing here dies," a male voice said. "Because everything is already dead. Keep that in mind, you bitch."

She looked up. Out of the ocean rose a shape, still made of black oil; a torso with many heads that resembled those of jackals, snapping in her direction. The sigil of the scorpion on board her ship lit up in tiny flames that, for the moment, did not burn anything, including the paper they were drawn on.

"You had me torn apart by my own dogs," the voice said.

So this was what had become of Sir Geoffrey Hawkes.

"You murdered my friend Joan and branded me with iron," Vanessa said coldly. There were actions she deeply regretted, but killing this man wasn't among them. She still remembered becoming one with the dogs, and the hot satisfaction feeling his flesh and blood in her throat had left. "Death was too good for you. I'm glad you ended up here."

"And so have you, you whore!" the mouths made out of black dripping oil roared. Between torso and throats, there was something substantial on the creature, the only thing not black and made of oil. She could barely recognize it, but there it was. A silvery chain, and from it dangling, that part of a man Sir Geoffrey had valued most.

How eminently fitting. This must have been why the birds had dragged her here. Another part to collect. But in order to take it from him, Vanessa would have to lift the protection the Scorpion sigil gave her vessel. She couldn't command the birds to lift it; they would fall into the oily abyss, feathers irrevocably bound together. No, she would have to use magic, and she couldn't do that from behind a ward.

Yet she knew that the moment she lifted the protection, the creature would try to sink the barge and her on it into the black oil it consisted of. And then she would not die. No, she would spend eternity like the bird now rolling helpessly on board her ship did, suffocating in the oil he'd drenched Joan with forever.

"Not just suffocating," Geoffrey Hawkes hissed, hearing her fears aloud. "No, for you, I'll set myself on fire, bitch. And don't think you can command _me_. Mother of evil or no, you have no power over me. You murdered me when I was alive, and that makes me your victim. It means you cannot command me now we are both dead, no matter how strong your magic, and I have the right of vengeance on you."

The waves around her boat grew higher, as if they were whips running from his monstrous body, lashing out at her. The smell of oil engulfed her, as it had when she had watched him and his mob pour it over Joan's body before they set her friend on fire.

It was unbearable, the thought this petty, greedy fool who'd killed her friend for land and spite should be the one to bring her down, to allow Dracula to plague the world forever.

"Joan!" Vanessa cried. "Joan, I have need of you!"

There were no arms around her, as there had been when she had called her mother. There was no sense of warmth. There was nothing, nothing but the sickening smell of oil everywhere, the sound of barking laughter, and for a moment, she despaired. Then she resolved to risk it all, for she would not draw back. Vanessa drew within herself and raised her hands to lift the warding spell.

"Did I not teach my little scorpion to have patience?"

There she was, standing on the paper barge's heck, right as rain, and rain was what she brought with her: blessed water, water pouring from her fingertips into the oily sea.

"You shouldn't have called me now," Joan said, rough Scottish voice unchanged. "Should have waited. There are harder tasks ahead, my girl, and each of us can aid you only once."

"What's that?" all the dripping throats of the Geoffrey Hawkes creature yelled. Joan ignored him, as if he wasn't there. But the water was running from her into the oil, clear and true, and started to dissolve it. The black thickness began to resemble more of a brown brew.

"I have been other than you hoped I'd be," Vanessa said, drinking her sight in. Dr. Seward had been so like Joan, and yet not: not half as scarred, nor half as loving. "But every lesson that you taught helped save my life."

The roars of Geoffrey Hawkes were turning into whining as the water made his torso blurry, like a smudged sketch in what was now a yellowish fluid. "You can't do this, witch! I have the right of vengeance!"

Finally, Joan deigned to speak to him. " _I_ have the right of vengeance," she said, "for you murdered me. And nothing here can die. Remember that."

The form of him dissolved at last as well into the water; became just as butter scratched on toast, endlessly scratched and torn and thinned. Just the silver collar and its pendant remained firm. Vanessa opened her palms, and lifting the ward, called it to her. As it moved towards her, air seemed to move with it, becoming wind, and the water flowing from Joan's hands started to change shape. It was as if it turned into tiny little drops, flowing no longer downwards but upwards. As if Joan herself was turning into cloud and rain.

"Joan!"

"Only one time, little scorpion" Joan's voice whispered mournfully. "But my heart stays with you, always."

Water, wind and rain engulfed Vanessa like a kiss. Then all were gone. In her hands, she held the collar and the pendant.


	8. Seance Encore

VIII.

Upon hearing of Mr. Lyle's suggestions, Catriona Hartdegen had immediately reserved the task of breaking into the great museum of Cairo for herself.

"Allow me to come with you," Dr. Seward had commented. "After all, when this is over, it would be a comfort to be allowed to the leave the country again without being identified as a burglar, or worse. The guards have done nothing to deserve the sharp end of your blade, and I fear that if they catch you..."

"I resent the implication that I would be caught. But I'd still be grateful for a little distraction to soothe their minds, if that's what you're offering."

The ladies' mission proved successful, which left them in possession of an ankh and a jackal's head.

"Neither of them is highly prized by the museum, " Mr. Lyle explained, "as they were deemed Byzantine forgeries, due to the few Arabic letters used. Their removal will not cause the greatest manhunt of the country, but we would be wise to rid ourselves of them quickly."

"Not yet," Kaetenay said. He stared at the relics in a mixture of distaste and resolve. "I can use these to search for the others."

The sense and touch of them was like a scent in the spirit world, he explained. Mr. Lyle had already narrowed down the list of likely locations on a map. Kaetenay, using the relics, could narrow it down even further, to a tomb or a building, but he needed to have seen those places with his own eyes first to recognize their echoes in his mind.

"But you've never been in Egypt before," Ethan protested. "Or have you?"

Kaetenay shook his head. "No." Then he looked at Malcolm and Ferdinand Lyle. "But they have."

What he proposed sounded to Malcolm very much like a seance, all too similar to the event at Ferdinand Lyle's house when Vanessa had spoken to him first with a stranger's voice and then with Peter's and Mina's; when they both had first encountered Evelyn Poole. Instinctively, he recoiled.

"You do not wish to join this hunt?" Kaetenay asked, watching him intently.

Malcolm tried to push his memories away. "Wishing doesn't come into it. I will do what I must to help you, as you are helping me. Mr. Lyle?"

Lyle didn't look any more enthusiastic at the prospect of another seance than Malcolm felt, but he nodded in agreement. At the earliest opportunity, Malcolm drew Victor Frankenstein aside and asked him to acquire whatever materials they needed to dissolve both ankh and jackal's head into nothingness once Kaetenay didn't need them anymore.

"And take Mr. Chandler with you."

"I can handle the streets of Cairo on my own," Victor said, still evidently prickly at the thought of being regarded as less useful in dangerous situations than Ethan Chandler.

"That," Malcolm replied, wondering whether he had ever been so young, "is not the point. I don't wish Mr. Chandler to be present at this...this seance."

"I thought we were all supposed to trust one another now," Victor said sarcastically, but complied. Trust, Malcolm thought, didn't come into it. If Kaetenay suddenly started to speak with the voices of the dead, as Vanessa had done, there were all too many candidates who could say all too many things to break anyone's soul, if a soul was still there. This, of course, was not what he told Ethan.

"Maybe our Dr. Frankenstein will finally reveal to you what truly happened between him and Mr. Clare, if you two are alone," Malcolm suggested. "Mr. Clare is still a somewhat unknown quantity, and you know those can be dangerous in a fight."

"I know you are a wily old bastard fond of circumvention, just like Kaetenay," Ethan said bluntly. "But have it your way. I'll go with him."

The boys out of the way, Malcolm ended up in a Cairo cellar kneeling in front of a map with Ferdinand Lyle, while Kaetenay sat across of them on the other side, the relics in his hands. His eyes were closed, and he was chanting, almost inaudibly. The darkness, which, as Lyle reminisced, always helped the focus of a medium, was illuminated only one oil lamp.

"Not that I have encountered another medium since... well."

The slow murmur from Kaetenay did have a hypnotic quality. Malcolm tried to focus on the here and now, on Egypt, on all that he knew of the country from previous travels. Next to him, Lyle, frowning, probably was trying the same.

"What are you doing?"

It was Kaetenay's voice, and wasn't, the cadences all wrong. At least it wasn't Peter's voice this time, or Mina's. It was a voice he'd heard before, though.

"Pathetic little men, the lot of you. The old wolf who led his people into slaughter and now can't bear to see the rest of them die in exile, so he rather fawns around the cub he's made from one of their killers. Then there's the licensed jester so ashamed of what he wants that he allowed a witch to torture those he claimed as friends at her leisure. Oh, and you. The _explorer_. How is it that you still find people to destroy by following you when all you ever did was rut and kill? But you didn't even get that right, did you? The rutting and killing. Keeps missing his targets, does Sir Malcolm."

The voice changed into a sing song. "Couldn't kill his daughter's killer, only killed his daughter. Couldn't fuck his not-quite-daughter, only ever fought her!"

If Malcolm had assumed he was master of his rage by now, this taunting taught him better. Despite all awareness of how important it was to continue so that Kaetenay might have the chance to discover where the rest of the relics were hidden, the fury in him would have caused him to jump up and strike at someone. But he found Lyle was holding his hand in a surprisingly firm grip.

"Sticks and stones," the Egyptologist whispered, and if his voice trembled, his hand held tight.

"I have her with me now. I am eternal, and so is she. You'll never have her again, fools. You weren't worthy of her. If you dare to cross my path again, your bones will dry in the desert! But not before you haven't watched your so called sons die, the lot of you. Have developed a taste for that, have we? Never fear, it will be satisfied. Over and over again. You're bringing me so many new lives, but then, that's what old men do, isn't it? Send out their young ones to die in their place."

Ethan and Victor, Malcolm thought. Were they being attacked right now? Were Dr. Seward and Catriona, who had declared they wanted to see the pyramids at least once now that the first success was achieved, and had taken Mr. Clare with them?

They were no children, he told himself. Each was a skilled fighter. If they _were_ attacked, they would defend themselves.

"Or maybe I won't kill you. Why should I be that merciful? I'll have you serve me, begging me for every maggot. And then you'll turn on each other for my entertainment."

Against his will, Malcolm thought of the pathetic Renfield, Dr. Seward's former assistant. He must have been a normal man once, or else a sensible woman like herself would not have hired him. Surely, he had not wished this fate upon himself, yet somehow Dracula had managed to enslave him like this.

Then he heard Kaetenay's voice again, and it was the Apache's voice, and no one else's.

"I think not," the old warrior said. The oil lamp went out. Malcolm could hear a thousand tiny movements in the dark, crawling, slithering noises. He freed his hand from Lyle's and drew out the lightening matches he was carrying. As they struck fire, he could see the glint of many eyes.

"Rats," Lyle said, shuddering. "Why does it have to be rats?"

"Because," Kaetenay said, "we have alerted the beast to our hunt. But know this: as it shared my mind, I shared his."

He had discovered all the hiding places, Malcolm thought, and locked up with hundreds of rodents about to attack, fierce gladness filled his heart.

"Then let us no longer waste our time here," he said, kicked over the oil lamp, threw his match, and set the cellar on fire.


	9. The Art of Healing

IX.

Half of the Duat was behind her, half of her quest done, when Vanessa, in the middle of fighting her way through a part of the sea that seemed to consist solely of knives and the sharp teeth of crocodiles, lost her left hand.  
She had been holding Jeanne's sword with both hands; it had seemed the time to use it, and amplified with her magic, it had served her well in this ocean of blades. But then one of the blades slipped through and cut away a hand, the sword fell on the ship's deck, and Vanessa, stunned, stared at her arm. At the stump that had been her arm.

It is only mind, not matter, she told herself, and wished her hand to grow back. It didn't. Nor did blood pour out of the stump, as it would have done had she still been alive. She did not understand. The sense of sudden weakness, though, was overwhelming.

"Peter," she cried, "Peter."

"You always did think me weak," he said sadly.

He looked as he had on the last day she'd seen him alive, when he had come to visit her in her own illness, the only member of his family to come to her after the great scandal, to look at her only in love, concern and forgiveness. When he had come to say goodbye, before leaving to travel with his father to his death.

"I loved you for your weakness," Vanessa said, as she wished she'd told him at the time. "But that is not why. Teach me, Peter."

"What?" he asked. "I died in pain before I could learn anything. You lived through pain, and became stronger, Van. What lessons could I give?"

She had brimmed over with self loathing on that last day; self pity, too, and rage at everyone. But in his eyes, there'd only been affection and kindness when he had looked at her. Her Orderly, Vanessa suddenly thought, her friend had been somewhat like him in that regard, when they were locked together in the place of whiteness and no shadows, where they had tried to turn her inside out. And then, when she'd found him again as Mr. Clare, there was kindness still, but also rage; he'd become more like her.

"How to love someone like me, Peter," she said softly. "Teach me that. I don't think I'll ever be whole again otherwise."

"Oh, Van."

The birds which still dragged her barge forward had all stopped flying by now. They were sitting on the railings, watching her. She didn't doubt that if she lost her hold on them, they would still try to tear her to pieces.  
He took her remaining hand and kissed it.

"I loved you for your courage," he said. "I still do. For your pride that was never cruel. For your laughter that was never mocking. For your beauty. I didn't desire you, not the way I was meant to, but you made my heart glad when I looked at you. I loved you for your compassion."

"What courage?" Vanessa asked. "What compassion? What pride? Peter, I failed so many times. I broke myself because I did not want to face what I had done to Mina. I wanted everyone to pity me instead. And then, when I was finally ready to face who I was, and what I'd done, I could not bear to do it alone. I had to do it with someone whom I could blame as much as he blamed me, that is why I went to your father. Compassion? I've made my bed in a charnel house, Peter, and I've watched men, women and children drained like beasts, by beasts, while they called me their Queen. And then I made Ethan kill me. That was the cruelest thing I ever did, to one who loved me, and you say I was never cruel?"

His mild brown eyes remained unchanged. But now she saw what she hadn't allowed herself to see before, that he _was_ different from the young man who'd said goodbye to her. There were hollows in his cheeks and bits of old blood on his lips. There were no nails on his fingers anymore, only raw flesh.

"You did all that," Peter said, "and so much more. You broke yourself, and put yourself back together, Van. That was an art I never mastered, and a strength unrivaled. You went through hell, and were willing to go back there if it meant to put an end to the suffering of others. What greater compassion is there? And despite all that you've lost, all that you've witnessed, you were ready to share your heart, again and again. There is no greater courage."

He kissed her forehead.

"You were my hero, Vanessa, when we grew up. You still are."

Tears blinded her. When she wiped them away, the way she'd done as a child, with the back of her hands, she realised she had used both of them.

Peter was gone.


	10. The Plagues of Egypt

X.

"You know," Dr. Seward mused, "when I moved to London from New York, I thought to have less violence in my life. Somehow, I doubt watching two wolfmen battle walking mummies qualifies."

They were huddled behind the ruined walls and rubbish of what remained of a small Arab settling on the island of Philae, between the Roman temple on the southward side and the mighty Egyptian temple that rose above the island from a high mass of granite rocks. These days, only two older women and two girls were still living on Philae, and they had been convinced through an almost embarassingly small sum of money to leave. Which had been a necessity, for by now Malcolm knew it usually took no more than a few hours for Dracula to raise some creatures of the night against them once they'd alerted him to their presence anywhere near one of his relics.

"I do not understand how they can walk," Victor commented. "Mummification includes the complete removal of the brain through the nose, this we know. How is it they can walk without a central nervous system?"

The two scientists stared with undisguised fascination at the sight in front of them in the pale moonlight. Despite himself, Malcolm felt amused. The larger part of him tried to think of a way to deal with the mummies if their first line of defense proved unsuccessful. The problem was that as opposed to vampires, who according to Victor did retain a central nervous system, bullets did not affect them.

As if reading his mind, Catriona Hartdegen, who crouched at his other side, indicated the blade she held with her chin. True, removing limbs would immobilize the creatures, as they'd seen when the creature Ethan had transformed into had torn the legs of one, along with half its throat. But the blade Catriona held was good for fencing, and that was what she was an expert in. Striking hard enough to sever a limb didn't need her lethal elegance, it needed brute force and a machete. The memory of his last visit to the Kongo came to him, of hacked off right hands by the hundreds, Belgian soldiers carrying baskets full of rotting flesh away and Sembene saying "Is this what you call civilisation, Malcolm?"

"However they do it," Malcolm said, focusing on the present, and the gory spectacle in front of them, "even if they are all stopped, we have another problem. I do not think Ethan and Kaetenay can be reasoned with in this state, not until the sun comes up. And we'll be on an island left with them."

The usually silent John Clare was poised to tackle any of the mummies managing to outflank both Ethan and Kaetenay. Previous battles had shown he was by far the strongest member of their party. He turned around, and looked at Malcolm.

"I will keep them from you," he said quietly.

"Without killing them?" Victor asked sharply. They were on the run through Egypt together, hurrying from one ancient settlement to the next while trying not to either get arrested by the British military or the Khedive's police, and trying even harder not to get killed by whichever creatures Dracula summoned against them from afar. As such, the opportunities for creator and creation to avoid each other had shrunken into non existence. The tension between them had correspondingly increased. Apparently there was a lot each blamed the other for, without either of them wanting to talk about it in front of the others.

"Before you made me who I am, _creator_ ," Clare said, "I was a man trained to restrain the most desperate predators of all - other men." His face which the full moon bathed in light that heightened its unnatural whiteness grew softer. "And women."

"Then you remember now?" Victor asked, distrust, guilt and resentment that usually colored his voice when talking to John Clare making room for pure curiosity, the same he'd shown when wondering how the mummies were able to move. "These memories must be engraved on a cellular level. I wonder, though, why they came back so much quicker to..."

Abruptly, he grew silent.

"Really, Doctor, we have all guessed by now you experimented more than once," Dr. Seward said acidly. "Don't stop on our account."

Malcolm was still debating with himself whether to interfere when an instinct honed in years among all types of beasts told him there was a suspicious lack of nightly noise, the roars from the two wolfmen and the sound of torn limbs excepted. When the sun had been setting, they'd heard insects, birds and especially frogs, as was normal for an Egyptian night. But not now. If they'd been on the steppe, he'd have assumed a lioness was close, but they were on an island with no large cats anywhere. He closed his eyes and tried to discern something, anything.

Then he heard Dr. Seward say, her American accent very pronounced: "Oh, come _on_!"

She wasn't talking to or about Victor anymore. When Malcolm opened his eyes again, he saw what had happened to the frogs. They'd left the banks of the Nile, it seemed, had ceased their quaking, and were now fast approaching, undeterred by the fighting going on, hopping relentlessly towards them.

"But - frogs? They can't even bite!" Catriona said, confused.

"They can fill your nose and mouth and stop you from breathing," Malcolm said tonelessly. "If there are enough of them."

"The plagues of Egypt," Ferdinand Lyle murmured, sounding half awed, half terrified.

"Well, at least there's something to strike and shoot at now," Catriona said. She was right. Holding his breath, Malcolm took aim.


	11. Temptation

XI.

It was, Vanessa had discovered, possible for the dead to grow tired. She felt weary to her bones by now, and yet there were two more gates ahead of her to sail through, and the occasional experiment to destroy the plunder she had gathered so far had proven to be unsuccessful.

When she passed the eleventh gate, it seemed to crumble almost as soon as her barge had entered it, turn from stone into sand that fell on her, and while her sigil warded off much, some dust still came through. It was everywhere, clinging to her skin, as the barge entered the eleventh part of the Duat, shuddered, and grew still. Looking down, Vanessa saw that there was nothing but sand around them, still; an ocean of it.

"My, my," a voice said. "What one wouldn't give for a nice, long, hot bath now."

The shape on one of the sandy waves was that of a black panther, if Vanessa had her large cats right. She remembered her visits to the natural history museum all too well. The voice, however, belonged to Evelyn Poole.

"I thought you'd come as a doll to me," Vanessa said.

"I try not to be obvious, Miss Ives," the panther replied. Its sinewy shape was beautiful, without a doubt. "Now, let us talk sensibly, woman to woman. Witch to witch, if you like."

"I'd like a certain relic," Vanessa retorted. "Nothing else."

"Oh, I think there are a great many more things you want. Which is my point. Miss Ives, I won't waste our time by lying to you. You know I resent you, and I think I have reason. You bested not just me, but my master, which is even more insulting, since it implies I should have been able to and failed in all my centuries of service. Moreover, the only man in eons who was able to break the spell I had on him and therefore qualified himself as interesting enough for me to offer true companionship to turned me down on your behalf. One does have one's vanity. All this not withstanding, what I'm going to offer you is absolutely sincere. No lies. I mean every word."

Try as she might, Vanessa could not detect a note of falsehood so far. Then again, this woman was an accomplished liar, and had had time to practice for centuries. Having defeated her once was no guarantee to defeat her again. Joan, who'd known her far better and had been as old, as powerful, had seemed almost helpless that night Vanessa first saw the night comers.

"No matter what you mean, you have nothing to offer. Save for that relic, and I doubt you'll give me that."

"Time," the panther purred. "Time itself, reversed."

This threw Vanessa. "What?"

"This place, Miss Ives, is beyond time. It contains multitudes. With the right magic, you could return from it to any point of your previous existence that you wish to."

There was still no sense that she was lying, but Vanessa shook her head in certainty. It had to be a trick.

"That is impossible," she said. "If it could be done, you'd have done long ago, and would not still be here. I thought you didn't want to waste our time?"

The panther approached her vessel, until the point where the power of the warding sigil began. "I can't do it alone," Evelyn Poole said. "Neither can you. But I know _how_ it can be done. A day walker and a night walker together, white and black magic. And eleven parts of an ancient immortal to empower us. It is the most difficult of spells, but we are both powerful enough, together. Imagine it, Miss Ives. You could go back to undo all your regrets. Back even to the maze, if that is what you wish, though I should think you'd want to keep that sight. Back to the night when you seduced your friend's young man for curiosity and competition. Just think about it. You've tormented yourself for years and years, and you can ensure it never happens. She lives, happily so, your friend still, at your side. Just share her bed instead, you know that's what you wanted in any case. And once the dragon shows up, well, you'll be warned."

There was still not a single falsehood discernable, and Vanessa tried her utmost to hear it. Mina living, she thought. Mina with her life unblemished. She could save Peter, too. And Joan. Her mother. Mina's mother. Sembene. She could travel to America and prevent Ethan from ever becoming a killer, as he had tried to do for her in Scotland.

"Oh," she said, and found that she'd sunken to her knees, "oh, you are _good_."

"I know," Evelyn Poole said smugly. This, too, was not a lie.

"And you would..."

"Well, I'd also return, obviously. To when would not be your concern. Though if it soothes your tender conscience, you could tell yourself you'd keep an eye out for me. After all, I am not a woman easily to miss, and again: you'll be warned."

There had been hundreds of dolls in the cellar of this woman's house. Thousands, possibly. And each doll held the entrails of a child. To allow her to return to the world would mean condemn more people to a bloody death than it was possible to count. And that were only those whose death Evelyn was responsible for directly. Who knew how many additional lives she'd taken by causing despair?

 _But you could stop her_ , a voice inside Vanessa whispered. _You've done it before. You could do it again. You're not responsible for those she killed before you were born. She is. Just go back, save Mina and the others, then stop Evelyn Poole, and all will be well. As for Dracula, do what Catriona had suggested. Kill his current form, and let someone else take care of the rest. He's weakened now. It will not be that difficult anymore._

Mina would live.

"You swear I will retain my memories?" Vanessa asked, for that seemed the most obvious trap: that she would return, but would commit all the old mistakes again, for lack of knowledge, while Evelyn had a free hand.

"I swear," Evelyn said, and the blazing assurance in her truthfulness and victory was scorching. The panther was now close enough that if Vanessa tried, she could look directly into its golden eyes.

She's seen eyes like this before, and thinking of John Clare reminded her of who he used to be before. Of the hospital, and what they had tried to do to her there. How they had tried to change her into someone else, in so many ways, and in the end even had been willing to remove all that had made her Vanessa Ives.

"Mina," Vanessa cried, "Mina!"

"Yes," the panther purred, misunderstanding, "she'll be yours once more and..."

There she stood. Not the pale predator she'd been at the end, or the young girl who'd run across a beach with Vanessa, careless of any sorrow. No, this was someone Vanessa had never known; a young woman in her twenties, who'd left her home behind to seek employment and another life, who'd married a young solicitor and had not looked back.

"Mina," Vanessa said, trembling, forcing herself to stand still instead of trying to rush in her embrace and be rejected, "it is your life. Your death. It should be your decision."

Silence fell between them. The panther hissed, ears laid back, tail twitching. Vanessa had always thought that there was no resemblance between Mina and Malcolm Murray; that Mina had nothing of either his physique or his character, fair where he was dark, modest where he was proud or vain, sweet where he was demanding or bitter. But now she could see that Mina had inherited Malcolm's chin, and that the way she narrowed her eyes, frowning, was that of her father.

"I cannot be that girl again, Van," Mina said. "Not at the price of so many lives, including mine. I did make a life, you know. And it was not about you, or Father, or that creature out of legend who made me into his toy to get to you. It was mine. Those memories are mine, not yours. Now here is one who wants to use me as an instrument again so even more people can die, and you need even ask? You didn't know me at all."

The panther yawned. Her throat was of a furious red. "Who cares what she wants?" Evelyn asked. "Let's cast our spell, and she'll have forgotten she ever begrudged you more than a lost ribbon."

"I'm sorry, Mina," Vanessa said. "More than any words can express."

"Van, don't..."

Vanessa raised her hands, and the birds who still were bound by her will fell on the panther, hacking out its eyes and bringing them to her over the screams of their last owner. They fell into Vanessa's palms, golden and not gelatinous at all, but warm and metal.

These had not been Evelyn Poole's eyes before. They had belonged to an immortal being.

"You'll regret this for all eternity," Evelyn hissed. "And I am not exaggerating. You're still unable to destroy them, aren't you? And you never will, because they can only be destroyed on the mortal plane, and that is where you now can never go again. He's waiting for you. Apophis, the Destroyer of Souls. Your Dragon. Behind the last gate. And let me tell you one thing, he's not pleased with the Mother of Evil. Enjoy."


	12. The Final Gate

XII.

"Oh dear," Ferdinand Lyle said, peering in great distress at the scroll they'd found near the last standing wall of the Temple of Amun at Umm 'Ubeida. It was part of Wahat Siwah, the Siwa Oasis where Alexander the Great had once been recognized as a son of Amun, and there they'd found the last relic of their quest in a chest that held several scrolls besides. Since then, Lyle and Catriona Hartdegen had taken to studying the writing, while the rest of them, by now bedraggled veterans, awaited whatever creatures would inevitably be summoned.

"What?" Ethan asked. "Locusts? More crocodiles?"

"Oasis or not, we're in the middle of the desert," Malcolm commented. "Desert storms are far more likely. And lethal."

Agitatedly, Mr. Lyle waved with his hand. "Alas, no, it is nothing as simple as that. According to this scroll, Miss Ives may be able to collect all of our foe's immortal relics in the Duat. But she can only destroy them _here_ , on the mortal plane."

That caused the rest of them to stare at him in various stages of numb shock and outrage.

"No," Ethan said. "I refuse to accept this. We've come this far, and I've finally started to believe the fact that I spent time each month as monster has a purpose better than murdering innocents. I begin to think that Vanessa did find a way to deal with this bastard for good, and now you're telling me..."

"Let me see the exact phrasing," Catriona interrupted, addressing Lyle. They spent some time debating the translation, then Catriona said: "Very well. It doesn't say _Vanessa_ has to do it, or that she has to do it here. It says that the immortal anchors of the Great Dragon are safe in the Duat, because they only can be destroyed by mortal means, created by the living. That they are indestructible because no creature who has not died can enter the Duat, and since a soul cannot carry anything mortal with it..."

"We get the point," Victor said. "Spare us more mystical ditherings."

Catriona shook her head. "No, you _don't_ get the point, and you of all people should, Doctor." She looked at them all, Lyle's scroll in her hand. The growing excitement in her eyes was palpable. "These conditions aren't metaphorical but literal. It means just this: no creature who has not died. The people who wrote this could not imagine someone dying and living again who wasn't a god. That something like this could be accomplished not by Isis putting Osiris back together, but by science. But you and Mr. Clare here have been telling us that it can be done, and that it _has_ been done. Or were you exaggerating?" she ended with a challenge.

Stunned, Victor shook his head. By contrast, John Clare looked at her in incredulous joy.

"So you think I can enter this Duat without dying again, and can carry the means we used to dissolve the relics here with me, physically, then join Miss Ives?"

Some of her excitement began to die down. "In theory. But in practice, I have no idea how you should enter the Duat in the first place."

"And even if we did know that," Lyle added sadly, "it is not possible to cross the Duat unless one uses the barge of Auf-Re, that is something all the myths agree with. If what we hope is true, that barge is currently used by Miss Ives."

To have come this far and not further, so close to achieving their goal, that was unbearable. The ruthless core in Malcolm that had enabled him to leave his dying son at a camp because not to climb the mountain he had sought for so long stirred again.

"If one of us were to die," he said slowly, "right now, that person could at least alert Vanessa to the problem. Armed with such knowledge, she could find a way for Mr. Clare to enter the Duat."

Ethan's head snapped up. "You're not going to get out of living without her by shooting yourself, old man," he said between clenched teeth. It said something about Ethan and his fundamentally decent nature that despite having known Malcolm for a while, and despite being raised by Jared Talbot and adopted by Kaetenay, that it had not occurred to him Malcolm might intend to shoot someone _other_ than himself.

"Malcolm," Kaetenay said, who had to know better, "there is no need for anyone to die. I shall seek her out the way I did once before. That is why we have brought the earth from her grave with us."

 _What you and I have done_ , Sembene once have told Malcom, _cannot be undone in a thousand years. So we must guard each other's conscience now._

 _And what conscience is that?_

"As long as it gets done," Malcolm said, wondering, not for the first time, whether the years of his own refusal to believe in an afterlife weren't motivated by the awareness that if it did exist, his judgment had long since been spoken.

* * *

The twelth gate consisted of a serpent's coil. Behind it, the coil continued, and Vanessa realised that there was nothing else, just endless coils and coils of a serpent that stretched from horizon to horizon, in all directions.

"Yes," a voice said. She knew it well. "There is only me. Nothing else is here. Welcome, beloved."

She picked up Jeanne's sword, which had been lying next to the mast on board her ship since the last time she'd used it.

"This is unworthy of you," he said. "Of us. Did you not accept me, of your own free will? You love me!"

"I accepted _myself_ ," Vanessa said. "Not you."

"Who gave herself to me then," he asked, "whose blood did I drink, who felt more joy when we became one than she ever did among the pathetic people who never understood her?"

Incredibly, there was a true sense of hurt behind his bluster. It had been this vulnerability that had drawn her to him when he had been Alexander Sweet, that had served to convince her he truly did feel for her.

"Feel for you?" he asked. "I have loved you through all the millennia. I have waited for you to return to me longer than any man has for any other woman. There has never been a love such as mine, and you know it."

There was no lie in his words, and yet he was utterly wrong.

"I know that you believe it," Vanessa said. "Maybe Amunet did, too. But I am not her, if ever I was."

"You are," he insisted. "You are the Mother of Evil. That is what you have accepted."

She shook her head. "I am myself. Vanessa Ives. And Vanessa Ives does not stand by to see the innocents slaughtered."

A shudder ran through all the coils and her barge shook. It took her a moment to understand that he was laughing.

"But you love the slaughter, and those who kill," he said. "Your wolf kills every moon, and you love him for it. Your witch killed the unborn, and you loved her. And then there's him, the first you've loved, who you kept coming back to. How many did he kill, before he finally got around to his own flesh?"

That was the truth he'd recognized in her which he had caught her by before. She made herself face it, and acknowledge it. Then she thought of Ethan's kindness and determination to protect. She thought of Joan helping those who hated her, those who had cursed Joan for it. She thought of Malcolm holding her after they had returned from the Grand Guignol, the tears they'd both held back for so long moistening her face as she pressed it into the hollow of his throat.

"You never see the whole," Vanessa said. "You see the fragment, and you want to make me it. I am not, any more than Jeanne was, when you tried to do it to her - Gilles de Rais."

"She was but a shadow of you, Amunet," he replied. "There is no need to be jealous. I was always yours, as you are mine."

He truly was incapable of understanding anything outside of what he wanted to see. Even Malcolm at his worst had not been so blinkered. Was this a result of immortality? Well, she had not come to enlighten him. She'd come to end him. Her head ached as she tried to scan the masses roiling around her for something that could be his head.

"But you can't," he said. "Surely you know that by now. For all you've done, and all you've suffered, you can't. You've only delivered yourself to me again."

Her headache increased. It is mind, not matter, Vanessa told herself, but the pain would not go away, stabbed inside her as with arrows, and she began to get distracted while he continued: "You'll stay with me now, forever. I'd have preferred it on the other plane, for you were such a delightful creature of the flesh, Vanessa, and I enjoyed it so. But be that as it may. We're one now."

She fell down on her knees, and the voice, calling to her from all sides, trying to drown out everything else she could ever hear, roared: "Mine! Forever!"

"Mr. Clare," Vanessa whispered, for she had learned to listen for the quiet in the middle of the storm a long time ago.

There was a sound of lightning and of thunder, a crack through space and time in this realm where all else was him, and through it stepped her friend, who'd loved her in the white place where no shadows were. In his hands, he carried something that her mind formed into the book he'd once read her from, the brush he'd used, the mirror he had given her to find herself again. It was all of this, and was a flask containing acid, too.

"No," the eater of souls thundered, and the coils around her started to pull together, started to crash her barge despite her warding sigil.

There was no time for greetings, or for gratitude. "Quickly," Vanessa said, and pointed to her spoils, which she had put together under the mast. He started to pour out his flask on them while the ship began to break apart, then asked: "But where is the twelfth?"

"All around us," she said. The acid dissolved the items, started to eat into what remained of the paper floor, and then the rest of the ship broke apart as the coils pressed into it. Vanessa held Jeanne's sword in one of her hands while John Clare's hand, with his inhuman strength, held onto her other arm. All the other relics and the ship were now gone while the coils started to draw around the two of them, would soon crush them. But not kill them. No. They would continue to exist like this forever.

She would not let this happen to her friend. She would not let this happen to herself.

In his free hand, John Clare still had the flask with the rest of the acid in it. She imagined it a jacket with long strings and cords, like the one she had to wear at the hospital, only this time it was so large it was wrapping itself around both of them, not like a binding but like an armour, protecting them. She imagined it as a sheath around her sword, drenching the sharp silver in its bite. She imagined it becoming one with the sword, as her scorpion sigil had become one with her. And then, with all power that was in her, had been, and would ever be, she pushed the sword into the serpent's body.

 _Such is my power,_ Vanessa thought. _Such is my kiss._

The world exploded around them.


	13. Epilogue

XIII.

There was a bloody redness to the sky when Vanessa opened her eyes again.

"The blood of Apophis", an excited voice, vaguely familiar, babbled with dizzying delight. "That's why the sunrise is red. After Auf kills Apophis with the help of all the other gods, he can become Re again, the sungod, and enter the realm of the living once more. That is why this is happening!"

"But my dear Mr. Lyle," another familiar voice, this one female, protested, "that was a myth! A metaphor, at most!"

The cool air of a desert morning, not yet warmed by the heat of the sun, was all around her as she drew a breath. A breath. Vanessa blinked, then breathed again. In. Out. Was this another trick her mind was playing on her?

A face swam into her sight, bowing over her, ashen with worry under the bronzed skin an outdoor life had left. It was the last face she'd seen - before. When she'd still breathed.

"Ethan?" she asked, and half rose when she found herself embraced and almost crushed, again. She breathed. In. Out. She couldn't believe it. Ethan whispered something in her ear. Over his shoulder, she saw Malcolm staring at her, not saying a word.

In, out. Breath. Life. She could feel blood pumping through her veins.

"Where is..." she began, when another part of her memory started to catch up with her, "...where is Mr. Clare?"

Wordlessly, Malcolm nodded to a point at the left of her. She turned her head and saw that Victor Frankenstein was busy examining the crouching, shaking figure of her friend. Belatedly, Vanessa could feel the tremors of her own body. She'd thought it had been Ethan, still holding her, who was trembling.

In, out. The air was clean, save for a scent of salt. Malcolm knelt down next to Ethan, still not speaking.

"He's dead," she said. It was a statement, not a question. She was as sure of this as of nothing else. It was her own status that she was still confused about.

"And all the lost souls found," John Clare said, hearing her. Vanessa, reaching behind Ethan to touch Malcolm's face, found it wet only for the second time in their lives. The morning dew, she thought, and breathed again.

"Yes."


End file.
